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unity-game-enginexamarinanimationcross-platformrendering

Creating CrossPlatform Animated Video Rendering Application

I am planning to create a cross-platform (Windows,Android and iOS in future) application just like Plotagon, where we can add/modify 3d model characters in some background scene, apply some animations & sound effects to those characters and finally produce rendered video of it.

When it comes to CrossPlatform, right now I can think of two technologies.

  1. Xamarin

    As far as I have researched, currently Xamarin has excellent support for Android and iOS. But, handling 3d Models and rendering becomes nightmare.

  2. Unity3d

    Since Unity can be used to develop Apps apart from games, Handling 3d Models and animating it becomes easier task. And I think its the way to go.

But, I have no clue of how to deal with rendering stuff.

Questions:

  1. Am I going in the wrong direction? If yes, can someone suggest better technology for accomplishing all the requirements.
  2. How can we render a video inside the app?

Little background:

I have 3+ Years of experience in developing enterprise applications(Web based) and few desktop applications using Java and .Net platform. Now started learning Unity3d.

Note: I am trying to avoid C/C++ languages.

Solution

  • I had a similar question when I was making my first game. I would strongly suggest going with Unity3D. I did and was very happy with it. Unity3D has a rich set of tools to help you develop your app and it is great for cross-platform distribution. And, in the case that it does not have what you need built-in, there is a store (the AssetStore) that has an enormous amount of helpful tools and assets.

    Take a look around https://assetstore.unity.com to see what it has. You can search for "movie" and get multitude of hits (everything from video capture to movie theater models). As a note, not everything in the AssetStore is free.